Collin blinked into her eyes, stunned. She loved him?
A thousand responses thundered through him as wild as mustangs. He didn’t know what she expected him to say. He had feelings for her, wanted to kiss her, to be with her, but love? He wasn’t even sure what that was.
“You don’t have to respond to that.” She gave his jaws a final caress and dropped her hands. “I just wanted you to know.”
She started to slip under his arm and move away, but he caught her. “No, you don’t. You don’t drop a bomb like that and walk off.”
She stopped and looked up at him, her gaze as clear and honest as a baby’s. Something dangerous turned over inside Collin’s chest. She was serious. She loved him.
Oh, man. How did he deal with that? And why had she chosen to tell him now in the midst of a conversation about God and Drew?
If her intention was to distract him, she’d succeeded. The idea of kissing her had been on his mind since she’d bopped out of that yellow Mustang and sashayed across his front yard with her family in tow.
Ah, what was he talking about? He’d wanted to kiss her a lot longer than that.
Now that he knew she loved him, he wasn’t quite so hesitant to follow through.
Drawing her closer, he lowered his face to hers.
She shrank back against the house and placed a hand on his chest. “I’m sorry, Collin. As much as I’d like to kiss you, I won’t.”
He frowned. “You love me? But you won’t let me kiss you?”
Her eyes filled with tears, confusing him more. He’d made her cry, though he had no idea what he’d done. “I’m sorry. Let me explain.”
Reluctantly, he dropped his hands and backed off. Everything in him wanted to hold her more than ever now.
The wind circled in between them. Mia shivered and hugged herself, and he had to fight to keep from taking her in his arms again.
“I could do that for you,” he said with a half smile.
But they both knew he wouldn’t push the issue.
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, eyes focused on some distant point in the darkness. “Tonight, I understood something about you, Collin.”
“Yeah?” He wished she’d tell him because right now he didn’t understand much of anything.
“I realized that you don’t know how to receive love. From God or anybody else. You’ve been hurt and rejected so much in your life that you think you’re unlovable.”
He didn’t much like the idea of anyone poking around inside his head, and he liked it even less when someone thought they knew what made him tick. But he had to admit, there was validity to her words. Normally, he didn’t listen to psychobabble, but from Mia—well, Mia was different.
“Love is a gift, Collin, and unless a gift is given away, it has no value. You’re valuable to me. I wanted you to understand that. I wanted to give that to you.”
“Then why—?” He left the question hanging. She loved him, but she wouldn’t kiss him?
He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets.
Her logic didn’t make sense.
“Because as much as I love you, I love God more. And I trust Him to know what’s best and right for me even when His rules hurt.”
Her words were a splash of cold water in the face. One minute she declared her love and the next she shut him out. “And God says I’m not good enough for you?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
She closed the distance between them and rested her head against his chest. He didn’t yield. He’d never let a woman get this close. And now she was telling him she loved him but he wasn’t good enough?
But in his heart, he knew she was right. A foster kid from questionable bloodlines could never be good enough for a woman like Mia.
“Will you hear me out?” she asked softly. “This has nothing to do with being good enough.”
He relented then, letting her tug one hand from his pocket. He couldn’t seem to say no to Mia.
“You have a lot of baggage from the past to deal with, Collin. None of that scares me off. God can heal anything. But that’s the key. You have to let Him.”
“What does any of that have to do with me kissing you? Does God have rules against a man kissing a woman he cares about?”
Okay, so he cared about her. Maybe a lot, though love wasn’t a word in his vocabulary.
Mia’s full mouth widened in a characteristic smile. “God’s all for kissing. He probably invented it. But he has rules about Christians kissing non-Christians. That’s hard for me to accept, but I have to. I’ll be your friend. And I won’t stop loving you even for a second, but that’s as far as we go.”
“You mean if I was a Christian, I could kiss you?”
“Yes.” She tilted her head to one side and gave him a lopsided smile. “But don’t be thinking I go around kissing just anybody, Christian or not.”
He already knew that about her.
“Okay, then. Friends. I can do that.” Friendship was all he’d ever expected anyway. Just knowing she was in love with him was burden enough.
Yes, friendship was far better anyway.
Mia dropped the last gaily wrapped gift into her shopping bag and headed out of the mall. The Christmas crowd was thicker than Grandma Carano’s spaghetti sauce.
She had met her best girlfriend for a late lunch and they’d talked about Collin. Sharing her concerns with a praying friend had helped. She was thinking about her cop far too much lately and though convinced she’d done the right thing by admitting her love for him, holding to the friendship rule was harder than she’d imagined.
Collin had the uncanny ability to move right on as if nothing had happened. But with a subtle difference. Last night, he’d come to her apartment, bearing a glorious red poinsettia and asked her out to dinner. When she’d refused, he’d wanted to stay and talk about the book she’d loaned him.
Not knowing if she was playing with fire or trying to be a good witness for the Lord, she’d made microwave popcorn and spent the next two hours in an interesting discussion about her faith. Collin was a bright man with a lot of questions and misconceptions about God. He was stuck on the idea that God had abandoned him along with everyone else in his childhood, and nothing she said seemed to help.
But he was seeking the truth, and that alone was a big step.
Upon leaving the crowded mall, Mia picked Mitchell up from school and took him back to her office. They had some things to discuss that couldn’t be said at his home. Later, she had his mother’s permission to take him Christmas shopping with the money Collin had paid him for working with the animals. No matter that she’d already spent two hours at the mall, shopping was something Mia could always do.
Mitchell looked scruffy and smelled worse. She hoped the odor was normal boy sweat and not cigarette smoke. He’d come too far these six months to regress now.
Once inside her small office, she handed him a stick of beef jerky and motioned to a chair. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
He ripped into the jerky. “About Collin?”
That surprised her. “Why do you think this is about Collin?”
One shoulder hitched. He flopped into the chair. “Since we didn’t go out to his place, I figure something’s up. He said I don’t have to come anymore.”
“You don’t.”
“I guess he’s tired of me hanging around.”
Mia rounded her desk and sat down. “You know that’s not true. Your official community service time is completed so nobody will force you to work on the farm anymore. Now the decision to go or not is yours to make.”
“Did he and Adam find the guy who started the fire?”
“They think so.”
He chewed thoughtfully, then spoke around a wad of jerky. “I don’t.”
Mia frowned. “What do you mean?”
Mitchell took a sudden interest in the tip of his beef stick. “Nothing.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
He slouched a little lower in the chair. “No.”
Which meant there was.
She sighed and let the subject drop. Mitchell shared confidences according to his timetable, not hers. “Collin needs your help now more than ever.”
“It really stinks about his brother. I wish I could do something.”
“You already do. You help with the animals. Keep him company. Cheer him up. He depends on you.” The boy was good for Collin, and the cop was finally at a place where he could realize as much.
Mitchell sat up straighter. “Yeah. I guess he does. He hates mucking out stalls.” One tennis-shoed foot banged the front of her desk. “But I meant about his brother.”
“We can’t do anything about Drew’s death, Mitch.”
“I meant the other one.”
She smiled. “Sooner or later, we’ll find Ian.”
She let a couple of seconds pass. The subject she needed to broach wasn’t a good one. Muffled voices came and went outside her closed door.
“You want a Coke?” she asked to soften him up.
“Nah.”
“Later, then. We’ll go to that Mexican place you like.”
“Cool.” His toe tapped the front of her metal desk over and over again.
Mia picked up a pen. Put it down. Took it up again. “We need to discuss your stepdad.”
Mitchell stiffened. The thudding against her desk ceased. He didn’t look up.
“I know you’re scared of him.”
No answer.
“I talked to your mother about going to a women’s shelter, but she refuses. She says there’s nothing wrong. Frankly, I don’t believe her, and I’m worried about both of you.” When he didn’t respond, she dropped the pen and leaned toward him. She was getting nowhere with this one-sided conversation.
“Mitch, if something should happen, anything at all, if you should ever be afraid, will you call me? Or Collin?”
He thought about her question for several seconds while a telephone rang in another office and a door down the hall slammed shut. Finally, he nodded. “Yeah.”
That was the best she was going to get. She rubbed the back of her neck and stretched. “I’ll trust you on that.”
Her office door opened and another social worker peeked inside. “Mia, could I see you for a minute?”
“Of course.” She stood and said to Mitch, “Stay put, okay?” She glanced at the clock. “When I get back we’ll head for the mall.”
“Can I play on your computer?”
“Sure. And have another beef jerky. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Three days later, Collin bounded up the stairs to the second floor of the Department of Human Services. Mia had said she loved him, but he’d never believed she’d do this.
She looked up from a stack of paperwork, the kind of overwhelming mountain he understood too well. Jammed into one corner of her office, a miniature Christmas tree blinked multicolored lights. A whimsical Santa waved from the wall behind her desk, and Christmas carols issued from her computer speakers.
“Oh, hi, Collin.” Mia’s face lit up. “I got your note.”
“Sorry I missed you.” More than sorry. Every day since she’d said those shocking words he’d found an excuse to talk to her, either in person or on the phone. The last couple of days she’d been out of contact and he’d missed her. He’d wanted to surprise her with a special offer that was sure to make her happy. Instead, she’d surprised him.
Somehow the knowledge that she loved him had changed him. He wasn’t sure what was happening inside him, but he liked the difference. He felt lighter, happier, freer, which made no sense at all considering the news of Drew’s death.
But then today in his mailbox... He slapped the brown envelope down onto her desk. He could never repay her for this.
“This is the best news I’ve had in a long time.”
She grinned at his unusual enthusiasm. “You could use some good news.”
He didn’t want to think she’d done this out of pity, but if he told the truth, he didn’t really care why she’d done it.
“I think this is Ian, don’t you?”
She blinked, puzzled. “Excuse me?”
He slid a sheet of paper from the envelope and laid the all-important document in front of her. “I think this is my Ian. I think this is the agency that handled his adoption.”
And he hadn’t even known Ian was adopted. Part of him rejoiced. At least one brother had found a family.
“Collin, I don’t know what you’re talking about—” She froze in midsentence as her eyes moved across the confidential document.
All the color drained from her face. Disbelief mixed with hurt, she shot to her feet. Rollers clattered as her chair thunked against the wall behind her. “I can’t believe this, Collin. How could you?”
Now he was confused. “How could I what?”
“Break into these confidential files. Compromise me this way. I thought we were at least friends.”
They were friends. A lot more than friends. “What are you talking about?”
“You were here in my office while I was gone.”
He rocked back, stunned at the unspoken accusation. “You think I broke into your files?”
“What else can I think? This document is from a sealed adoption file. No one, not even me, is supposed to look at those files without express permission or a court order.”
He knew how important her professional integrity was. He’d never even considered such a thing. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Somebody did.”
His jaw grew hard enough to bite through concrete as her accusation hit home. “And you think it was me.”
She stared at the twinkling Christmas tree. He sensed a battle going on behind those warm gray-green eyes, but her silence was an affirmation. Finally she said, “Who else would want to?”
He had an idea but if she couldn’t figure that one out on her own, he wasn’t about to toss out accusations. Not like she’d done. “You’ll have to trust me on this, Mia.”
She pushed the sheet of paper back into the envelope and handed the packet across the desk. Her hands trembled. “I hope you find him.”
“Will you help me?” He needed her. And he wanted her there beside him when Ian was found.
She shook her head, expression bleak. “I’m sorry, Collin. I can’t.”
She didn’t believe him.
All his joy shriveled into a dusty wad. He’d finally let a woman into his heart and she couldn’t even give him her trust. Some love that was.
Fine. Dandy. He should have known.
He yanked the envelope from the desk and stalked out.
Mia locked the door of her office and cried. From her computer radio, Karen Carpenter’s lush voice sang “Merry Christmas, Darling.” She clicked Mute.
How could Collin have done such a thing? He’d been in here two days ago, at her desk while she was at lunch. He’d even left a note. She’d wanted to believe he wouldn’t do this to her, but how could she? Hadn’t he pressured her more than once to open those files?
Over and over she remembered when Gabe had badgered confidential information from her. Just like Collin he’d said, “Trust me, Mia. You know I wouldn’t do anything that could hurt you.”
But in the end, her actions on his behalf had hurt her plenty. She’d lost her job and her credibility. And though Gabe had worked hard to make the loss up to her, she couldn’t forget the awful sense of betrayal and shame.
Her own flesh-and-blood brother had compromised her for his own gain. How could she believe that Collin wouldn’t do the same for a much more worthwhile reason?
Not that she wasn’t glad he had the information about Ian. She only wished he’d come by it more honestly.
Collin stewed for two days, hammering away his anger on the barn that didn’t seem to be getting any larger.
He hadn’t broken into Mia’s computer, but even if he had, he wouldn’t lie about it. Why couldn’t she see that? He’d considered questioning Mitch, but why bother? The deed was done and Mia blamed him.
If he’d known falling for a Christian was this much trouble, he would have run even harder the day she’d bought him a hamburger.
His cell phone rang and he slapped the device from his belt loop. “Grace.”
“Mr. Grace, this is the Loving Homes Adoption Agency in Baton Rouge. I think I may have some information for you.”
His heart slammed against his rib cage. His hammer dropped to the ground. Happy gazed up at him, puzzled as he grappled in his shirt pocket for a pencil. With shaking fingers, he scribbled the information on a piece of plywood.
His brother’s name might be Ian Carpenter.
Everything in him wanted to call Mia, to share the excitement of finally having a concrete lead.
But he wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want him to.